


I Would Not Wish Any Companion In The World But You

by thefutureisbright



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, Fluff, M/M, Meet-Cute, Mutual Pining, No Angst, Subways, they meet on the NYC subway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:27:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22439488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefutureisbright/pseuds/thefutureisbright
Summary: 9th January 2003 // 06:24amThere are fifty four seats on the subway. Fifty four seats split across two carriages. Eddie knows this because he’s counted them. He’s counted them, over and over again, when he boards at seventy-eighth street, and takes the blue line south into the city every day at 06:24am. The air whips around his head cruelly, a mocking tempest that whispers in his ear, the rest of the world slumbers, the rest of the world sleeps like the dead. The subway station is buried deep in the underbelly of the street, five flights of stairs below the surface. Eddie descends every day, Persephone to her kingdom beneath the earth, a daily pilgrimage that he’d rather not take.The air whips around his head, a bizarre faux-breeze created by the whooshing of the subway trains, and Eddie seethes silently.[OR: Eddie gets the 06:24 train into the city, Richie joins the train at 06:45. Somehow, they always seem to be on the same carriage]
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 30
Kudos: 242





	I Would Not Wish Any Companion In The World But You

_9 th January 2003 // 06:24am _

There are fifty four seats on the subway. Fifty four seats split across two carriages. Eddie knows this because he’s counted them. He’s counted them, over and over again, when he boards at seventy-eighth street, and takes the blue line south into the city every day at 06:24am. The air whips around his head cruelly, a mocking tempest that whispers in his ear, _the rest of the world slumbers, the rest of the world sleeps like the dead._ The subway station is buried deep in the underbelly of the street, five flights of stairs below the surface. Eddie descends every day, Persephone to her kingdom beneath the earth, a daily pilgrimage that he’d rather not take.

The air whips around his head, a bizarre faux-breeze created by the whooshing of the subway trains, and Eddie seethes silently.

* * *

_9 th January 2003 // 06:45am_

Fucking fucking fuck fuck _fuck_. He’s late. He can practically hear the subway pull into the station, bouncing on its tracks impatiently, as he skitters down the stairway, sending a suited-and-booted businessman flying, the skittle to Richie’s bowling ball. A “ _watch it, you fuckin’ lunatic”_ later, and Richie’s on the platform, panting breathlessly as the train ambles into view. His sneakers are soaking wet, an unwelcome parting gift from the storm raging outside, and he wiggles his toes miserably, wet socks clinging, limpet-like, to his skin.

The train is heaving. Faceless bodies jostle each other, wordless micro-fights for territory, but no-one wins the war. Richie slides onto the carriage, lodging himself securely between a woman with a bouffant hairdo that smells like hairspray and the end of the world, and a man with sunken eyes. The train lurches forward.

* * *

_9 th January 2003 // 07:03am_

He’s back. Eddie can sense him before he sees him. It’s as if the air shifts, as if the static sings out one clear note, loud and piercing, before shifting back to white noise once more. He’s back. Eddie turns around, as subtle a movement as he can manage, and sure enough, the man with the floppy hair and the Midas eyes is standing awkwardly in the middle of the carriage, one hand grasping the rail so tightly his knuckles are white, the other clasping a cup of coffee that was surely destined to spill. The man’s routine is almost as predictable as Eddie’s, as regular as the ebb and flow of the tide. He boards Eddie’s train at Hazelwood, always thirty seconds before the doors shut tight, always with a red tinge to his face, always with his glasses steamed with the effort of schlepping his body through the station at lightning speed.

Eddie flexes his hand on the handle of his briefcase. The leather is damp with sweat. The train stops once more, people filter off, people shove their way on. The dance continues.

* * *

_13 th January 2003 // 06:15am_

For the first time in a week, Eddie makes it to the station without the heavens splitting open. His coat remains dry, and the music from his headphones is loud and uninterrupted in his ears. The inky sky is dappled with stars that shine brightly, almost too brightly, and Eddie turns his back on them as he descends into the subway station once more, with Ian Curtis warbling in his ear. The stars do not miss him.

His phone buzzes, surely a text from the warm body he’d left slumbering in his bed mere minutes before. Eddie ignores it, and the phone buzzes feebly once more, until it sits petulantly still in his pocket.

“Spare any change, mate?”

Eddie nods his head, and scrabbles in his pocket, fingers skimming his phone, before he pulls out five coins. He places them in the hand that wobbles slightly in the air.

“Thanks, Sir.”

Eddie nods again, a sharp, jerky movement, and walks on.

* * *

_15 th January 2003 // 07:25am_

The doors of the train yawn open, and Richie trips out. He turns around, face flushed with embarrassment, scanning the vacant faces that stare out of the windows at him, the faces that stare past him, all of them but one. One set of eyes, curious and concerned in equal measure, do not leave his until the train has heaved itself up off its haunches once more, and scuttled off into the tunnel. Richie stares after it for one, two, three beats, before he turns on his heel and walks away.

It takes fifteen minutes for Richie to get to the radio station, a building that looms over the sidewalk. He waves his pass at the disinterested looking guard, and begins his trek up the four flights of stairs to his cubicle.

“Hiya, Rich,” Mike Hanlon says, a honey’d voice, a voice made for talk radio and asking you how you take your eggs in the morning.

“Howdy, partn’r,” Richie returns, and Mike laughs.

Mike slips past him, and skips down the stairs, humming a small ditty that Richie didn’t recognise.

Half way through his lunch break, half eaten sandwich discarded at the edge of his desk, chip crumbs stuck to his fingers, Richie remembers those eyes, and the face the eyes belonged to.

* * *

_18 th February 2003 // 07:00am_

“I’m on the train, the signal might dip out,” Eddie warns, but the crackly voice on the other end just laughs.

“It’ll be fine, babe.”

“I’m just saying, you might not –”

“Eddie? Eddie are you here? I can’t hear you”

Eddie rolls his eyes, glaring at the ceiling as if it had personally affronted him. “I warned you, Jasp.”

“Hello? Eddie? Helloooo?”

Eddie hangs up. The phone buzzes once in his hand, a text. Eddie doesn’t read it.

The train pulls into the next station, a few minutes late, and the air crackles. On cue, the man with the hunched shoulders and sloping nose crowds his way on, nestling himself between a girl smacking her gum loudly and a woman with a large, unfortunate wart on the end of his nose. The man looks cheerful, and he taps his foot restlessly to a silent beat. Eddie watches the man from where he’s standing a few feet away with his arm thrust in the air, hand gripping the hand rail, or rather, the magazine that he had placed between his hand and the rail, a perhaps futile attempt to keep his journey and his hand as germ free as possible.

Thoughts of work invade Eddie’s brain with a familiar war-cry of _meeting at 9am with the Bainton Brothers, must call Christine about the Duffer case, have I filled in the paperwork for the audit next week?_ Eddie lets the thoughts percolate and ferment until he’s giddy from the fumes.

The train pulls into 6th Avenue and the man gets off the train. Eddie closes his eyes against the loss.

* * *

_29 th February 2003 // 06:47am_

He’s late. He skids around the corner, lungs threatening to rupture against the cage of his ribs, and watches helplessly as the train pulls gracefully away from the platform and disappears into the mocking darkness of the tunnel. He’s really _really_ late.

Richie swears under his breath, and crosses his arms against the cold. The arrivals board flashes. The next train into the city is due in six minutes.

* * *

_29 th February 2003 // 07:01am _

Eddie wonders if he’s sick, or if he’s got a new job, or if he’s simply decided that he wants to get the 06:54 into the city instead of the 06:45. The realisation that he’d miss his nameless travel companion sucker punches Eddie in the gut with such force that he staggers back slightly. His phone buzzes in his pocket, and guilt shoots up his spine.

* * *

_19 th March 2003 // 06:53am_

A pair of seats free up after Nasser St Station, and Richie victoriously slides into them. He can count on one hand the amount of times he’s managed to rest his still-half-asleep legs on his morning commute, so he savours each opportunity like a fine wine. He plops down into the seat by the window, and rests his forehead against the cool glass. The seat beside him remains unoccupied for a suspicious length of time, and, unable to ignore it any longer, Richie sits up straight and looks around, curious. The carriage is uncharacteristically empty, the usual throngs of people unaccounted for. A lone figure stands in the middle of the carriage, head bowed, nodding along in blink-and-you’ll-miss them movements to music playing from his headphones, the bassy undertone bleeding from them loud enough for Richie to hear, but he doesn’t recognise the song.

Richie coughs.

Nothing happens. The train continues forwards, dancing in and out of stations rhythmically, and the man standing in the middle of the carriage flexes his hand around the hand rail, the newspaper lodged between hand and rail crackling loudly.

Richie coughs again, and one cough becomes two, and two becomes three until he’s spluttering, a fake explosion that he hopes catches the attention of a certain someone.

“Are you alright?” a voice asks, and Richie stops coughing immediately.

“Yes, I’m fine,” he replies, and the woman returns to her seat, eyeing him curiously.

When Richie turns away, a sheepish grin plastered on his face, he locks eyes with the man in the middle of the carriage, and his smile widens involuntarily. The man continues to stare at Richie, or rather, stare _next_ to Richie. His eyes are trained on the tired, threadbare covering of the unoccupied seat next to Richie, with his eyebrows knitted as if deep in thought. Richie blinks, teeth bared in a now manic grin, and the man jerks, taking a step forward on unsure feet but, at the last moment, he stops, right foot hovering stupidly in the air, the ghost of a step never to be taken.

An older woman that smells like talcum powder and lavender soap sits down next to Richie at the next stop. The man disappears from view, and the smile slides off Richie’s face like tar.

* * *

_30 th March 2003 // 07:13am_

Eddie practically throws his briefcase onto the seat, the previous occupant barely out of the way before the briefcase lands on the seat with a loud thud. Disregarding the fact that he has to get off the subway in four stops, Eddie slumps into the seat. The backs of his heels sting, a punishment for having the audacity to replace his old shoes, shoes with large holes in the soles, and buttery leather scarred with cracks and creases. Preoccupied with his protesting feet, Eddie barely registers a figure pushing its way down the carriage, before a body lands on the seat next to his, narrowly missing Eddie’s hand which he withdraws with a silent hiss.

Annoyance stirs like snakes in Eddie’s gut, before he glances at the face of the person whose knee was pressed solidly against his. Their eyes meet and, immediately, Eddie stares at the floor.

The man with the impish grin and the bushy eyebrows shifts in the seat, his knee no longer touching Eddie’s, and Eddie counts to five in his head, long and slow.

* * *

_30 th March 2003 // 07:23_

Richie shifts in his seat, trying desperately to recapture the attention of the man beside him, who was staring out of the window, eyes squinted with the force of his gaze, but Richie was sure that he was seeing nothing at all. The man was shorter than Richie, and slight, body wrapped carefully in a suit made from a soft looking fabric, and Richie’s fingers itched with desire to touch it, to dance his fingers along the swooping lines of the man’s arms. Richie taps his fingers against his own thighs, and he gets lost in the movement, absorbed in the tap-tap-tapping of his fingers against his leg, and before he knows it, and before he’s ready, the metallic voice echoes out across the carriage.

“ _The next stop is 6 th avenue west, if you’re leaving us here please ensure you have …” _

The voice fades into the background noise. The man beside him tenses. Richie stands. The man slumps back in his seat, head resting against the window. Richie leaves.

* * *

_9 th April 2003 // 1:32pm_

He’d gotten the call the night before. Mike was off sick, a viral infection that had swollen his tonsils to the size of golf balls, and the station desperately needed someone to cover the afternoon slot. Richie, mainly out of sheer devotion to Mike Hanlon, had graciously agreed, and had left his morning slot in the capable hands of his co-host. He had still woken at the crack of dawn, his body refusing to sleep for longer than it was used to, but Richie petulantly lay in bed until 8:45am, refusing to get out of bed until his bladder screamed riotously and he had counted every crack in the ceiling of his bedroom.

He had strolled to the subway station, coffee in hand, Danish pastry sitting heavy in his belly, relishing in the ability to be unhurried, to take his time, to potter this way and that. The subway was, predictably, much quieter than it was in the morning. Three or four people stood on the platform with him, mostly young adults, clutching heavy rucksacks. The train pulled in, Richie stepped on, and, almost immediately, dropped his coffee.

* * *

_9 th April 2003 // 1:34pm_

Eddie watched as the man with the scuffed sneakers and large hands dropped his coffee, caramel coloured liquid pooling on the floor. The man huffed, a noise that was as annoyed as it was embarrassed, and stared helplessly at the mess on the floor.

A great, hacking cough forced its way up Eddie’s throat and, despite his attempts to squash it down, he erupted into a coughing fit that he buried in his scarf, eyes screwed shut against the throbbing in his ears. His eyes were hazy, every blink a Promethean effort. The air was thick, thick like honey but not half as sweet, and it stoppered his aching lungs viciously. The man had abandoned the spilt coffee and was now sat on a seat that directly faced Eddie’s, concern etched onto his face. Eddie, barely able to turn his neck without pain shooting up it, shut his eyes against the concern, and let the gentle rocking of the train lull him into something not quite sleep.

* * *

_9 th April 2003 // 1:44pm_

A small packet of tissues fell gracelessly into Eddie’s lap, and when Eddie turned to look out of the window, neck practically creaking under the effort, the molten amber eyes of the stranger met his.

* * *

_21 st May 2003 // 8:45pm_

The first time he had seen them, small daggers of ‘ _did you really think’_ and ‘ _are you quite that stupid’_ had stabbed at Richie mercilessly. The second time he’d seen them had been worse, as the knife twisted and turned, a simple confirmation of the inevitable. Now, the third time, Richie was, thankfully, closer to careful apathy than ever before. They were laughing to each other, the braying hooting of the stranger contrasted with the quiet, gulpy laughter of the man Richie had spent practically every morning staring at, spurred on by cruel hope. Richie crossed his arm, the leather of his jacket rustling loudly, loudly enough that the object of Richie’s misguided infatuation glanced over at him. His eyes widened, a minute action but magnified under the intensity of Richie’s gaze, before he looked away, before he looked back at the man whose arm he was nestled under, and pointedly didn’t look at Richie again.

Cruel hope reared its ugly head once more upon Richie’s realisation that the man with the sandy hair and the laughter lines that Richie had studied so often never sat quite as close to his hulking brute boyfriend again.

* * *

_12 th June 2003 // 8:34pm_

Jasper was ignoring him. He was jabbing at his phone obnoxiously, body angled away from Eddie’s deliberately. He didn’t notice when Eddie stood up, and moved to the seat across the aisle. He didn’t notice when Eddie collapsed in on himself, supernova turned supermassive black hole. He didn’t notice when Eddie stood up once more, and left the train at the next stop.

But someone did.

* * *

_13 th July 2003 // 06:56am _

“Oh, is that him?!” Mike asked loudly, pointing at the sandy-haired stranger who was standing on the opposite side of the carriage. A riptide of embarrassment crashed through Richie’s body.

“Don’t fucking _point_ at him, Jesus Christ!”

* * *

_13 th July 2003 // 06:58am _

“ _Don’t fucking point at him, Jesus Christ!”_

Against his better judgement, a sapling of a smile sprouted on Eddie’s face, a smile that was watered and nurtured by the frenzied muttering of the stranger to his sniggering friend, a smile that bloomed openly, proudly, towards the sun.

* * *

_25 th July 2003 // 07:23am_

A scrap of paper floats through the air like ash after an eruption, and lands neatly on Eddie’s lap. It’s the corner of an old newspaper, and Eddie can vaguely make out the words, ‘ _the senator has issued a statement staunchly denying the ….”._ Other than that, the scrap is entirely, utterly, unremarkable. Eddie gripped the paper between his thumb and forefinger, and then, only then, did he notice the scribbled handwriting on the other side.

‘ _I read this when I was 15. Couldn’t sleep for a week, totally ruined my kid sisters birthday party when the clown arrived and I took off screaming”_

A tiny, menacing looking clown peers up at Eddie from where it has been drawn hastily in the corner with a chicken-scrawl scratch.

At the bottom of the scrap, is a tiny, so tiny Eddie almost misses it, ‘R’.

* * *

_27 th August 2003 // 06:59am _

Richie leaves notes on the lap of the man with the kind, tired eyes for exactly a month, and not once, never once, does he receive one in return. They range from commentary about the book the other man is reading, or about what Richie ate for dinner the night before, or once, after Richie had wracked his fatigued brain for the entire journey to little avail, a not-entirely-true ‘ _I saw a squirrel that reminded me of you yesterday.”_

Richie chalks the lack of reciprocation up to the fact that the stranger’s journey extends beyond his. Every morning, Richie disembarks the train before the stranger, who continues on to some unknowable destination. Never once does the stranger get off before Richie.

Until he does.

An entirely unremarkable Tuesday morning skates straight into the most bizarre experience of Richie’s short life when, at a stop he couldn’t name, one the train sails straight through each morning without fanfare, the stranger with the green-gold eyes stands up. He stands up, and practically runs in Richie’s direction, and throws a very neatly folded piece of lined paper into Richie’s lap. Then, before the doors can entrap him once more, the stranger is gone.

Richie watches him dart away, up the slimy slick stairs of the nameless subway station.

_I’m going to be late to work because of this._ The only words on the piece of paper, _I’m going to be late to work because of this._ Richie checks it once, twice, thrice, but all that he finds are those ten words.

Ten words Richie treasures for the next ten years.

* * *

_1st September 2003 // 06:26am_

With his fringe caked to his forehead with sweat, Eddie trips down the stairs to the subway platform blindly, boarding the train on autopilot. Unusually for a Wednesday, Eddie has to push his way on past hordes of people that jostle and shove at each other as the train breaks into a sprint towards the next station, and then the next, and then the next, and then it’s _his_ stop. He’ll be getting on soon.

A bead of sweat chases down between Eddie’s shoulder blades. He shivers. His hand is slick on the hand rail.

And then he’s on. They’re closer than they’ve ever been. They come together like drift wood, pushed closer and closer still by the indifferent tide of people. The stranger stumbles, and his hand shoots out, grabbing at the hand rail that Eddie clings to. Their fingers are but centimetres away from each other now, and it’s too close, too close for Eddie and his fragile heart to bare, but then he’s falling, closer and closer, and _closer._

“Fucking _watch it!_ Fucking idiot, I’m fucking _standing here!”_ he yells, and the teenager who just sent him flying forwards into the chest of the stranger with the now bemused eyes flips him off.

“Fucking _child!_ Asshole,” Eddie says, no longer talking to the teenager but instead airing his frustration at the ceiling that just stares dumbly back at him.

The stranger is laughing.

* * *

_1 st September 2003 // 06:54am_

“Fucking _watch it!_ Fucking idiot, I’m fucking _standing here!”_

Richie laughs. He can’t help it. The other man stares up at him, anger vanishing from his face, chased away by an embarrassment that lingers.

“Are you okay?” Richie asks, and it’s out of his mouth before he can stop it. The stranger eyes him cautiously.

“Yes, fine thanks,” is all he says, and Richie gulps it down, parched.

* * *

_2 nd September 2003 // 06:47am_

A note lands in Richie’s lap.

_Dinner?_


End file.
